More Liberals Praise Jeannine Graf

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More Liberals Praise Jeannine Graf

By Ed Oliver
February 2001

Alan Dershowitz: “One of the Best Show Hosts”
Alan Dershowitz tells MassNews, “Jeanine Graf is terrific, she’s always been a great talk show host. She was responsible, intelligent, forceful, one of the best talk show hosts I’ve ever been privileged to be on with.”

Dershowitz said he believes Graf was fired because she wasn’t “rightwing” enough to please station management.

After blaming his favorite villain — the vast rightwing conspiracy, Dershowitz elaborated:

“I think it’s part of the process going on all around the country. Almost anybody who’s not a rightwing ideologue ends up getting fired from talk shows. We’re seeing the O’Reilly-ization of television and radio. You’ve got to be an idiot like O’Reilly to make it on the radio or television.”

This isn’t the first time Dershowitz has blasted Fox TV’s Bill O’Reilly who did a show about Fistgate at the time the story was breaking last year. However, after gay activists got Superior Court Judge Allen Van Gestell to issue a gag order barring any discussion of the Fistgate tapes, Fox Television obeyed the order for the time being. At that time, Dershowitz called O’Reilly a “wimp” for obeying an “unconstitutional” order.

Dershowitz went on Jeannine Graf’s show at the time and said, “The press can’t be stopped from publishing. This is the first rule of the First Amendment.” He gave as an example the inability of the government to stop publication of the “Pentagon Papers” during the Vietnam War.

Regarding Graf’s lone, courageous nightly broadcasts about the Fistgate controversy, Dershowitz said, “She called it the way she saw it. She’s that kind of a person. All I can say is I’m a big fan of hers and when she gets a new radio talk show, I’ll be happy to be her first guest.”

Harvey Silverglade: “She’ll Be Missed”
Harvey Silverglade is a criminal defense attorney and civil liberties litigator. He has taught at Harvard, is an author and writes a regular column for the National Law Journal.

Silverglade told Mass News, “I’m disappointed that she won’t be on the air.”

He said that Graf raised issues and points of views that are significantly underrepresented in the Boston news media. He said he went on Graf’s show to discuss liberty and fairness and the problems of political correctness on college campuses. “On most of those issues, but not all, she would tend to agree with me. I’m much more libertarian oriented than she is. But I have to say she treated me fairly, and I thought intelligently. She’ll be missed.”

Gail Dines: Graf Represented Women
Upon hearing the news that talk show host Jeanine Graf was fired, Gail Dines, an associate professor of sociology at Boston’s Wheelock College and frequent guest on Graf’s show, immediately voiced her suspicion that the firing might be related to Graf’s gender. She suggested that Massachusetts News might want to see how many women are talk hosts at WTKK.

A check of the talk lineup, however, shows an almost even split between male and female hosts. Dines said the other female hosts at the station were “men in drag,” because they hold the same opinions as the male hosts.

Dines, who is an author, lecturer and specializes in “media research,” praised the way Graf treated her with respect on the show, as opposed to the way she said male hosts treated her. She mourned the loss of Graf from the airwaves saying it will leave a great void. “Talk radio is a white male wasteland,” she said, explaining that male hosts tend to ridicule her as well as “bond” with male callers against her. Not so with Jeannine, who she said took her very seriously and tended to attract the women callers.

Dines asked if the males who support Jeannine neglected to mention the gender issue. “This is pivotal to what she did. You cannot separate Jeannine from the fact that she dealt with issues about women in a very thoughtful, sensitive manner.”

Dines, who speculates that gender was the reason Graf was let go, called for a boycott against WTKK, “to show that they have no right to make talk radio a white male bastion.” She said the whole idea of talk radio is to have a range of voices.

Joel Lidz: She Was One of the Brighter People

Professor Joel Lidz taught philosophy for twenty years and has been at Bentley College since 1987. He said he has no evidence that politics was behind the firing of Jeannine Graf, but it is certainly possible. He said, “It is too bad she lost her position because she is one of the brighter people on the air with informative, often educational programming.”

Lidz, who was a guest on her show, said Graf did a fine job as a host letting callers and guests air their various perspectives.

He said he spoke with Graf and does not understand how they could give her two hours notice that she was being canned. He said that arouses suspicions in him.

Dan Kennedy: It Was A Business Decision
Media critic Dan Kennedy of the liberal Boston Phoenix blamed the radio biz for Graf’s demise. He said her 7 p.m. time slot was “brutal” because only so many people listen to talk radio and she was up against David Brudnoy and the Chris Lyden show.

Kennedy said he knows in general that WTKK has struggled to get the kind of ratings they want and he thinks the evenings are particularly difficult.

Kennedy downplayed any type of political motive behind Graf’s ousting. “To the extent that liberals get offended, I think far more people would find Jay Severin far more offensive than Jeanine Graf ever was.” He said WTKK kind of built the station around Severin because his ratings have been pretty good.

“And that’s really what the bottom line is in radio.”

Kennedy said he was on Jeannine’s show once or twice and agrees with her on almost nothing. “I like her. She was a good professional host, but it’s all about ratings. That’s all it is.”

Kennedy said Graf was not even-handed and it would not particularly make good radio if she were. But she would get “some airing of the other side in,” and was “certainly more fair minded than Severin,” who he said never gives anybody a chance to open their mouths.

Kennedy explained that once Graf lets a guest have their say, it pretty much went all her way after that. “Which is fine, that’s how you do a talk show.”

Kennedy said he shies away from using terms such as rightwinger, but he did say that Graf was certainly very conservative. “I think she’s more conservative than Severin politically. I just find Severin’s style to be much more over-the-top than hers, such as calling Al Gore a ‘crack whore’ and talking about Hillary Clinton’s ‘fat ass.’”

Kennedy said any time an issue-oriented show goes off the air he’s sorry to see it happen. “I think the audience for talk radio is more limited than ten years ago. I was really surprised when you had WTKK and WMEX, which has just retreated, suddenly diving into the all-talk format, and at a time that there really was no sign that this is what people were clamoring for.”

Kennedy continued that WRKO was all-talk and the top-rated talk show was Brudnoy on WBZ and Lyden on WBUR did very well. So when WTKK and WMEX started, he said, “You kind of knew that this was a real weak buffet.”

Kennedy said he’s certainly not surprised to see WTKK trying to retool and give more time to Severin, who he said seems to be the guy who gives them some ratings. He said they seem to be trying to cut expenses wherever they can, such as rerunning Barnacle’s morning show in the evening, which he said doesn’t cost them a nickel.

Jeff Epperly: Graf Was Nice to Him
Jeff Epperly, editor of the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows, told Massachusetts News that he was a guest on the Jeannine Graf show a couple of times, including a discussion of Fistgate, and she treated him fine. “She was very nice, very sweet to me.”

Epperly was reluctant to comment further. He said he did not know enough about the ratings or format situation at the station to comment on Graf’s firing. He also said he did not listen to Graf regularly, so he could not comment about how she conducted her show.

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